Some books I've read.

So it's been awhile, again. I think I started my last blog the same way, anywho, sometimes I post on here about books I've read, sometimes I put a note on facebook and sometimes just a status update will do the trick. It's been three books back since I've posted about any of them so I thought a blog would be a nice fit. The last book I remember posting about was Faithless:Tales of Transgression by Joyce Carol Oates (to recap, it's a short story collection, I liked most of them). So after the somewhat long, short story collection I turned to something light and predictable but also enjoyable, The DayBreakers by Louis L'amour. If it were an old movie western it'd be the white hats versus the black hats, with just enough ambiguity thrown in (except for the hero who never waivers,of course)to give the story a minuscule amount of depth. But you don't read paperback westerns for depth you read them for the never give up, tough as nails, gun-slinging, gentlemen heroes and lines like these: "The first thing I was learning was there are times when a man had to kill and times when he had no need to. Reed Carney wanted a shoot out and he wanted to win, but me, I'm more than average contrary.", "There would be trouble enough, but man is born to trouble, and it is best to meet it when it comes and not lose sleep until it does." More than average contrary, I love that line.
After Louis I dove in to Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the first in his Millennium series, it was a big hit in Sweden and then a big hit here, they've already made Sweedish movies out of the trilogy and now there making them in Hollywood. So I thought I'd give it a try. It starts out a little slow as it sets up the characters and then it becomes a whirlwind page turner for most of the book. Reading it I was loving it and then it hit some sour notes, the Swedish title literally translate to Men Who Hate Women and that title is very much to the point. There's some real sadistic characters in this novel and I don't care to read about such goings on, had I know what I was in for I don't know that I would have started reading it in the first place. So by the time I finished the book I wasn't planning to read the sequels. Now, I'm not so sure because the main character Lizbeth Salander, despite being a little too over the top, is a really good character. Larsson said the idea for the character was a sort of Pipi Longstocking grown up, and I might add a little, no lot, twisted.
Then finally, this blog has gotten long winded I'm afraid, Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov. Again one I liked at the outset better than at the end, although let me hastily add that I still did like it at the end. It's the story of a person, Hugh Person to be exact, and his four trips to Switzerland (I just now realized I read back to back books set mostly in Switzerland) and it's about the transparent nature of life, things, and memories. Near the beginning there's a fantastic chapter about a pencil that falls out a desk drawer that Mr. Person tries to close. It runs down the history of the pencil from great tree to manufacturing to much sharpened and very little thought of pencil. Near the end Nabokov says, "Human life can be compared to a person dancing in a variety of forms around his own self...,going faster and faster and gradually forming a transparent ring of banded colors around a dead person or planet." This novella was... interesting and entertaining but also a little bit of a downer so next up is Christopher Moore's Bloodsucking Fiends, which should be an lol read.